Article by Maryann Gaug
My house and camper van are buried in snow and although the sun is shining brightly, it’s below zero out there. Time to think about our July 23-27 conference in glorious Glacier National Park. Hmmm… glaciers sound cold, so think warm July days …
Part of the fun of traveling is the anticipation. Here are some ideas to get your travel, photography, and writing juices going.
The Glacier National Park website contains two eHikes and two eTours. One of the eHikes is Trail of the Cedars and Avalanche Lake. I’ve been on the Trail of the Cedars, which meanders through, well, cedar/hemlock forest, more typical of the Pacific Northwest. Half of the nature loop trail is a boardwalk passing tall western red cedar, black cottonwood, and copious ferns. The other half of the loop is paved, following tumbling Avalanche Creek.
To watch this eHike (or either of the eTours), you’ll need a computer with Flash Player and QuickTime, and either Explorer, Firefox, Safari, or Chrome web browser. Enjoy your eHike!
To get started:
• Click here
• On Glacier’s home page, click on Photos & Multimedia in the left column
• Then click on Virtual Tour
• In the white box, click on eHikes
• Take a minute to read over the instructions and experiment with the screen shot at the bottom of the page.
• Then click on Trail of the Cedars & Avalanche Lake Power Hike. A short musical segment plays.
• When the Introduction screen appears, make sure to read the text box, then click on the arrow in the black bar. You need to get to the third screen to start eHiking.
• On the third screen, click on the red dot on the map. You’re hiking!
• On each screen, you may see various icons. Click on the ranger hat to hear audio, the bird for a bird’s-eye view, the movie camera for a video, ear phones for natural sounds, and the i symbol for information, and the rectangle (TV) for a 360˚ panorama.
When you’re finished with the first red dot, click on the next red dot on the map for the Avalanche Lake Trail. If nothing else, I thought you might enjoy the combination of our crafts into an interesting show.
The eTours include Building the Going-to-the-Sun Road and Land of Many Stories (history). Access them as above by clicking on eTours instead of eHikes.
You can also download podcasts to your cell phone (click on Multimedia Presentations the on Videos). One is Going-to-the-Sun Road points of interest so you can have a tour guide on your phone!
A few other tidbits:
For those of you with large vehicles, the Going-to-the-Sun Road has size restrictions, so be sure to check that area of the website.
For those of us who like camping in park campgrounds, you can make reservations for Fish Creek Campground, 4 miles from the west entrance. As of early February, people had already reserved quite a few sites. So don’t wait too long.